Primary Education News

Instead of worrying about 'ideological infiltration', we should be ensuring that all state education is secularIf a serious objection to one of Birmingham's allegedly ideologically infiltrated state schools is, according to a leaked report , its failure "properly to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain", the culprits find themselves, in throwback terms, in exalted company. Fellow suspects include the entire cast of the state opening of parliament, a host of judges, any number of Ukip candidates and, of course, the British aristocracy, whose most celebrated progressives, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are now conditioning their infant son to accept as inevitable his future as defender of the faith.True, with the obvious exception of Prince Charles, few of the above would probably feel more comfortable with an Islamic state, apparently another criticism of the "Trojan horse" suspect, but here, too, Birmingham academies are surely entitled to feel sore about Ofsted's objections to attitudes which, had they been advertised on a designated faith school's prospectus, might have looked respectable, even admirable. Continue reading...